Car rental study from Which? reveals market leaders Cover4Rentals scores joint highest for their gold cover excess insurance

When hiring a car for travelling in the UK or in Europe, holidaymakers are often blissfully unaware they don’t have to buy additional insurance. Even though it’s commonplace for car hire companies to expect people to take out the hire companies’ own car hire excess insurance, often using unscrupulous tactics. 

Which? most recent study reviewed dozens of car hire excess policies and in doing so uncovered the hidden truths behind car hire rental excess insurance.

Market leaders Cover4Rentals, gold cover, independently scored joint highest for car hire excess insurance based on Which? thorough comparison. The comparison used 17 essential elements from coverage to claims limits for scoring.

Cover4Rentals also have some of the lowest prices and whilst price was not part of the comparison, Cover4Rentals represents excellent value for money.

What is car rental excess insurance?  

When hiring a car, basic insurance is always included in the rental price so that you can jump in and drive a hire car once you’ve been passed the keys. 

However, and this is the important bit, this basic insurance is subject to an ‘excess’, so this means if the car is damaged (whether it’s your fault or not), you have to pay towards to cost of repairs (known as the excess) and the cost does vary from hire company to hire company. 

Common issues like a puncture could cost as much as €300 to rectify, while a replacement windscreen can cost around €750.

So, as you can imagine, when faced with costs like these, most people opt for the hire companies’ own car hire excess insurance expecting to have most events and accidents covered.  

This all makes sense right? 

No! 

People don’t have to take out the excess insurance provided by the car hire company. 

If they do, the price paid for the hire company’s car hire excess insurance can be up to 12x more than from Cover4Rentals and when compared with Cover4Rentals Gold policy, you’ll end up with inferior levels of cover too. 

Jon from Cover4Rentals:  

“My brother and I started Cover4rentals out of our frustration of experiencing excessive car rental prices whilst on family holidays.  

Seeing this was commonplace across the car hire industry, we committed to help other people from wasting money on expensive car hire charges, specifically “Excess Waiver” that is offered by car rental companies. 

We are very grateful for our team at Cover4Rentals (C4R) who work relentlessly to provide both the best value and highest levels of service to our customers.  

We only hope that this study from Which? will raise awareness further and help even more people do more whilst on holiday, save even more money and have greater levels of cover when renting a car.”